The easiest way to keep your fans up to date and to create a space that can integrate all of your social media spaces, videos and photos is by setting up a blog. There are many blog services to help you get started, including Tumblr, WordPress, and Blogger.
Tumblr calls itself “the easiest way to blog.” If you are short on time but want to get quick messages to your fans, Tumblr helps you easily post text photos, quotes, links, music and videos from anywhere and it’s easily customizable. (Free)
WordPress says “you can get a blog started in less time than it takes you to read this sentence.” If you can use Microsoft Word, WordPress will be a breeze. You get free and customizable designs for your blog, 3 gigabytes of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures) and much more. (Free)
Blogger is good for those that like to have fewer passwords. It’s owned by Google so if you already have a Google account, simply sign in at Google.com/blogger. It’s easy to use and, like the others, it’s free.
The important point for indie musicians to note is that you must blog frequently and on a regular basis. To keep your fans engaged and interested in your music, you should blog a minimum of once a week. Share your blog posts via social media by posting links on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Having a blog allows you to cross promote yourself across various platforms.
Are you a musician that has been blogging lately? Tell us about your experience!
Next week we’ll talk about cross promoting your pages on social media.
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Personally i don’t care for blogging! it’s time consuming, blah blah blah. “but i do blog”, i don’t know if anyone is reading it, but i blog. i blog on myspace, Facebook, blogger ect.I think i do it so that i can be found in search engines I’ve yet to receive an email saying that i read your blog about your new album but you didn’t put a date on it or something to that fact but ill keep doing it and try to keep it updated but just because it doesn’t work for me doesn’t mean it won’t work for you hear is my latest blog post Here
http://thedeadmansblog.blogspot.com/
Keep it up….it will eventually pay off if you are providing useful content for your viewers. Plus, it definitely helps with search engine optimization.
“Gotta Getta Blog!” – that’s EXACTLY the name of MY blog: http://www.ggci.com/blog3/.
As you might have guessed, it’s the 3rd iteration of my blog.
For v1 (http://www.ggci.com/blog/), I used Blogger. Simple. Easy. But it got too big so and was taking too long to update.
So I started v2 (http://www.ggci.com/blog2), again, on Blogger. But when Google bought it, they changed the rules on how to host and update the thing, basically shutting me down.
So I created v3 (http://www.ggci.com/blog3) with WordPress. Not as simple. Not as easy. Steeper learning curve to be sure. But now that it’s up and working, it’s easy-peasy — and MUCH more powerful than Blogger ever was.
My advice: Whichever blog platform you choose, find someone you know who’s already using it so you can get a little help setting things up and tweaking them to your satisfaction.
Enjoy!